While still a year from its release Ray Kroc's bio-pic will surely be another exaggerated, antibusiness Hollywood product. But, McDonald's veterans mightbe interested in which actors are playing important figures in McDonald's history.The Founder (2016) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb.

McDonald's Operators may hear some discussion from today's analyst meeting aboutdoing something with the McDonald's real estate empire in the form of a Real Estate Investment Trust. While having a third party influencing the real estate side of the franchise relationship would be disastrous for McDonald's Operators - not to worry.The ongoing activities of the supplier owned REIT - System Capital Corporation - willprevent any real transparency into McDonald's real estate and the topic will fade away as it always has..

November 7, 2015

Much of this is a rehash of survey comments but it's always cute when a PR person speaks for the entire Operator community from her cubicle in Oak Brook. "We’re working to turn around our business with the support of our 3,100 independent franchisees, who are excited about sales drivers like all-day breakfast (which they overwhelmingly passed in a strong majority vote)," McDonald's spokeswoman Heidi Barker said. "We understand that they are reassured by our willingness to co-invest in future growth drivers."Edward Jones analyst Jack Russo says: "There is change taking place and he franchisees don’t like that," Russo said. "McDonald’s is asking them to reinvest back in their business, in wages and labor, and they are not happy about that. But change had to happen at the company and they’ll be happy again at some point."McDonald's Is Poised to Rule Fast Food Again - Business Insider.

I've made more than my usual number of visits to "fast-casual" restaurants this fall. If one listens to the business media you'd think that Americans were flocking to Five Guys, Chipotle, and other non-QSR restaurants by the millions leaving McDonald's and Burger King locations vacant.Maybe there's some of that happening if only because, as compared to a decade ago, there are a lot more fast-casuals out there. But it appears that fast casuals have puta huge limitation on themselves - the service and wait times are atrocious. I submit there are only a limited number of customers who will stand around waiting forever for their food. This leaves a huge competitive advantage for traditional QSRs because there are millions more customers who will forgo slow food for a quick graband go in the drive-thru or at the counter.Any QSR brand that thinks they can drag those drive-thru customers inside to standaround waiting for ten minutes after ordering does not understand their customers.The felony dumb statement of 2015 was uttered from Oak Brook IL when a McDonald's spokesperson said, about Create Your Taste, "If they know we're making it especially for them people don't mind waiting".There are a few such customers out there but not enough to justify destroying a restaurant system by being a copycat. .